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From issue: May 2002

On a "Happening Little Corner"

by Shelley Sweet

A landmark "corner store" in Christchurch tells a rich story of the city's twentieth century history.

The Piko building on the corner of Kilmore and Barbadoes Streets. Picture: Piko Co-operative

These days the Barbadoes and Kilmore Streets intersection in Christchurch carries a busy flow of traffic. On the corner stands a big, old, red brick building with orange pumpkin murals of an old fashioned quality attracting your attention to Piko "The Original Organic Store". This architecturally appealing two storey house/shop has stories to tell from the horse and cart days at the beginning of last century when the Bradley Brothers, Painters and Decorators, opened for business in 1905, up until the present day. A significant part of the building's history has been since the 1970s and 1980s when "the Avon Loop Experiment" and Piko Wholefoods Co-operative were born out of a particular social environment.

An historic building houses a shop which caters for modern eating habits. Picture: Piko Co-operative

The "Loopies" (as they have been fondly referred to) were a rare example of young and old living and working side by side despite often differing ideologies. Cheap rents in the area and some undeveloped spaces attracted radical young people with visions of an urban utopia. They advocated self-sufficiency and wanted to grow their own vegetables and rear chickens on the undeveloped land. Even with differences, this was a real community. Piko, the wholefoods co-operative, was born out of this. "Piko" refers to the bend in the river, and was the name given to the co-operative by Maori elders.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Piko building was one of several historic buildings in Christchurch threatened by plans to widen Barbadoes St. Picture: Piko Co-operative

In the 1940s, Elsie Locke, who died only last year, and her husband Jack, bought a tiny, run-down cottage in the Avon Loop, where three sides of the little suburb are defined by the river. Elsie, together with Janet Moss, local horticulturalist and botanist, worked on ALPA, the Avon Loop Planning Association. This included local riverbank ecology and town planning. Community spirit was also reinforced with a recycling scheme, jumble sales, apple crumble nights and films at Piko, playgroup and the Avon Loop Community News (which is still going).

The Piko store makes it easy for mothers to shop. Picture: Piko Co-operative

The years have passed and thanks to the largely volunteer efforts of those earlier inspired people, there is still a happy village atmosphere both within the Avon Loop area, and across the four corners of the Kilmore and Barbadoes Streets intersection. One of the early visions for "the corner" was to have alongside Piko Wholefoods an "alternative" pharmacy and a cafe selling wholefoods. Today, the Herbal Dispensary and the Herb Centre Cafe stand on the corner alongside such other businesses (several long-established) as Williamson Picture Framers, Sycamore Hair Design and a dairy. A recent addition is the business Retropolitan selling funky junk, retro furniture and clothing.

The building soon after it was erected in 1905. Picture: Piko Co-operative

Stepping into the Piko store is a little like stepping back in time. It still has the feel of an old fashioned grocer's shop with heavy wooden swing doors, paper bag packaging, and big plate glass windows displaying open sacks of grains and pulses. Customers linger and chat with each other. Amanda Cropp comments in the magazine Next: "Once regarded as a hippie haven selling bean sprouts, tofu and lentils, Piko Wholefoods is now an institution. Ageing hippies with backpacks and greying ponytails are still among the customers, but the shop is also patronised by well-heeled shoppers sweeping up in four-wheel drives and plenty of 'suits' popping in for vegetarian pies over lunchtime."

Members of the Piko Co-operative in their shop. Picture: Lloyd Park, courtesy of Piko Co-operative

Piko began trading in March 1979 in a small shop on Kilmore Street. In February 1981 Piko moved to the present premises. The shop aimed to place people before profit. To quote Hans Schaper, a founding member of Piko Wholefoods who went on to start up The Opawa Bioshop: "It all came out of the Avon Loop community. We shared meals in different places and saw the need for a wholefoods shop. There was nothing then in Christchurch that we called wholefood (although there were some health food shops) and prices were high. A lot of people in the Loop were health-conscious too."

Piko was committed to wholefoods versus processed foods and supplements, organics, bulk purchases and simple, self packaging to keep prices down, and consensus and equality among the workers. These are still the ideals behind Piko. Those of us who work at Piko in 2002 believe we have retained a little utopia on the days when going is good, when people feel like they are their own boss and fun is high on the agenda.

We are certainly proud that while some updating of systems has been necessary for efficiency in a much busier shop, the original values are still working well. It is quite an achievement that Piko has survived as a co-operative for twenty-two years in a competitive, capitalist world.

We take delight, too, that we have added an important new chapter to the social history of a building of appealing architecture. The brick design on the building features polychromy, with lighter yellow-coloured brick around the windows and entrances. The ornamental balconies on the Barbadoes Street side are cast-iron filigree. The entrance is framed by stunning lead-light windows and the shop also has a treasured lead-light inset in the east-side wall. Stained glass, as used in the Piko building, became popular in New Zealand after 1900. The decades 1900 to1930 saw it used in a range of large two storey houses and also many Craftsman bungalows.

In 1905 the Bradley Brothers erected the building for accommodation and a shop. Bradley Brothers, Painters and Decorators, imported oils, pigments and glass, and traded as painters, paperhangers, signwriters, and even plumbers. The Bradley family remained the owners and leased the building after they moved their own business to other premises.

It was occupied through the twenties and thirties by two different fruiterers. The Bradley family owned the premises until 1977. In 1980 the Otakaro Land Trust purchased the building for Piko Wholefoods Co-operative, and so it remains today.

Stan Harris, a longtime resident of the area, remembers Mrs Martin (Annie May Martin, fruiterer, who took over the lease in 1929) playing "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" on her wind-up gramophone on the balcony. "You'd hear it all the time going past the building." Stan also remembers that on the corner "there was a butcher, and a fishmonger … next door to that was a cake shop and later a book shop, and next door to that again was a barber shop on the corner, Pierce Brothers … opposite on the east side was a chemist shop and a cake shop with a grocer next door to that and then a little, old wooden building ... there was a wheat and grain merchant and a boot-maker."

It is a significant part of the history of this building that Piko has proved to be an anchor for other businesses that have gathered in the area. On this corner other interesting examples of commercial building types have survived the demolition that has occurred elsewhere in the city and the trend to shopping in suburban malls. It is a little corner of the city that was but has largely disappeared.

Conscious of the importance of their building and its place in the city's social history, Piko workers have written a booklet about it. Much of the impetus for writing this history was our attachment to the building in which we work. The character of the Piko building has become meshed with the character of the shop itself - it is hard to imagine one without the other. The building is old and needs some attention, including costly earthquake strengthening work. We realise that if we sold this building it would, in all likelihood, be pulled down and the site "developed". With this in mind we are committed to finding ways of staying on this site and preserving our building.

Shelley Sweet is a member of the Piko Wholefoods Cooperative.